Times 25799: Achilles’s Mum meets Kaide Smith at the Last Post

Posted on Categories Daily Cryptic

Solving time: 32:18

The harder of the two on offer today. Possibly obscure animal and nymph and a rare foray into popular dance. Still very enjoyable.
On advice, this puzzle’s still on the Club site and the only one in the paper, so I’m going ahead with the post. Hope this doesn’t do any damage.

Alec

Across

1. PURCHASE. Which would be CHA (tea) in a PURSE (bag).

5. GAMBOL. Anagram of MOB inside GAL.

9. KINKAJOU. KIN (family) and OU containing K,A,J (card honours). “An arboreal nocturnal fruit-eating mammal with a prehensile tail and a long tongue, found in the tropical forests of Central and South America”. ODO.
10. DUBLIN. That is: D{o}UBLIN’. The joke about the Irish waiter, I shall omit.

12. OFF THE RECORD. OFF (wrong), T (time), HERE (present), COR (my), D. Take the “minute” vis-à-vis meeting records.

15. NADIR. Anagram of RAIN inc D (died). For some reason, I always mistake this with its opposite, apotheosis.

16. IBUPROFEN. Anagram: one burp if.

18. CRUSTACEA. CRUST, ACE, A.

19. SCREE. SCREE{d}; “a levelled layer of material (e.g. cement) applied to a floor or other surface”. ODO.

20. INTERMISSION. IN (during), TERM, IS, SION.

24. THETIS. “Thetas” with I for A. See title.

25. VLADIMIR. VR (Victoria Regina) inc LAD, I, MI (note). The literal is just “Russian”.

26. DO(TAG)E.

27. I DARE SAY. I’D and AY (always) inc ARES; cf MARS.

Down

1. POKY. P, OK{a}Y.

2. {g}RIND.

3. HEAD FIRST. HEAD (teacher), FIRST (best class of, say, Honours).

4. SHORT CIRCUIT. Two indications; the second fanciful.

6. ABUSE. BUS inside A and E (Accident and Emergency).

7. BILL OF FARE. ILL-OFF (presumably the opposite of “well-off”) inside BARE (sparse).

8. LINE DANCER. Two indications; the first fanciful. See title.

11. REGULAR SOLID. Or: REGULARS, OLID.

13. UNSCRIPTED. N, SCRIPT inside an anagram of DUET.

14. AD,JUST,MEN,T. With the T from {expec}T.

17. RESPONDER. {g}R{e}E{n}S, PONDER.

21. RUING. RUNG (step) outside 1.

22. A,MOS{t}.

23. FRAY. Two indications; both literal.

29 comments on “Times 25799: Achilles’s Mum meets Kaide Smith at the Last Post”

  1. I feel a bit glutted having done two cryptics at one sitting; and I now notice that I didn’t bother to parse a few of the clues, like 27ac, which I got from the enumeration more than anything else. THETIS I knew I knew, but I couldn’t remember who she was until I came here. I hesitated at SCREE, partly because I didn’t see how it works, again until I came here. And isn’t the opposite of nadir zenith?
    Thanks for all your blogs and comments, Mctext. You’ll be missed.
  2. Rattled through this without much problem, but then I’ve been practicing already today.. didn’t think they were far apart in terms of difficulty though.

    I’m pleased you got to sign off with a blog after all, mc. Do you know how many that makes?

  3. Looks like I may have a day off, for which release much thanks!
    At least if I don’t need to blog this one I won’t have to reveal my inability to spell CRUSTACEA even with helpful wordplay, making my time of 20’7″ rather irrelevant. Otherwise, this was a spookily similar experience to the other one, an inability to get anything in the NW, and a quick fill down the Eastern approaches.
    I would parsed AMOS differently – something to do with MO(S), even several of them still being a brief time, but of course McT is right.
    CoT(omorrow) to KINKAJOU just for trying. PURCHASE was also both clever and amusing.
  4. The relevant folder on my MacBook says: 128 items. I think I shall lurk and post if I can still get the puzzle. Bit like Koro’s current MO.

    Once the Club is dead, I suspect I shall need neither of the Murdochs. Rupert has never chucked a cent into the University named after his uncle Walter. The latter was a far better man. He was told of the naming as he was dying — I visited the site of his bush honeymoon when he was well into his 80s — and he said “it had better be a good one”. The University, not the honeymoon; though no doubt … ! Sadly, gone to the dogs these days.

    Edited at 2014-05-28 07:39 am (UTC)

  5. After half an hour I didn’t have KINKAJOU and knew I was never going to. I always forget about that honours=cards thing. Oh well.

    Loved OFF THE RECORD for the def.

    Alec. 128 thank yous. And I really hope we see you around regularly. Cheers.

    1. Thanks S. But why’s your userpic missing? Maybe, like me, you just stopped your LJ account. Mine goes to Jan 2015. I shall try to use it until then.

      Edited at 2014-05-28 08:12 am (UTC)

  6. Just popped in to say thanks McT. Excellent blogger, and always first on hand to resolve any parsing issues.

    I live pretty close to Murdoch Uni myself. Close enough to be distressed by the “road to nowhere” that’s about to be driven through our wetlands. Another initiative of our Murdoch-sponsored government.

  7. … you were so close. And yes that bloody Roe Hwy extension. We should get together for a coffee some time. (But not on campus — where 6dn in the other puzzle applies!) Will PM you with my private email address. How are you fixed on Saturday mornings?
  8. Although this is the only puzzle in the online newspaper, the one in the facsimile of the printed edition is 25798.

    Anyway this one was quite hard and I was reasonably happy to finish it in 49 minutes without resort to aids although there were a couple of unknowns to deal with along the way. I thought 1ac was rather good. Couldn’t find REGULAR SOLID as such in any of the usual sources and even Wikipedia redirects it to ‘Platonic solid’ which for some reason amuses me as an expression, but let’s not go there.

  9. 35m, but like sotira didn’t know KINKAJOU and didn’t remember honours as playing cards. To make it worse Kinkajou has led me to have My Coo Ca Choo as an earworm.
  10. This puzzle appeared online a day early by mistake and has been withdrawn. The chap who does the online puzzles made a very rare mistake and got the days wrong.
    So that people therefore don’t inadvertently stumble on this blog if they’ve not done the puzzle (which is not in the paper anyone) it might be idea if it was taken down temporarily.

    Richard Rogan
    Times Crossword Editor

  11. 72 min: got completely stuck about halfway, so had a break, and then resorted to aids to find possibles to fit checkers. AMOS LOI, being doubtful about parsing, too.
  12. Sorry to hear about the goof, and sorrier still about McText going off. Thanks for all your great blogs and helpful pointers.

    Cheers
    Chris

  13. Managed to avoid either doing the puzzle or reading this blog yesterday and so was able to come to it fresh this morning. Another reasonably easy one I thought completed in 20 minutes with no trauma and no really stand out clues.

    I don’t mind the guy who posts the things making “a very rare mistake” – that’s life. It’s the guy who checks everything that regularly gets things wrong – might that be the editor?

    Sorry to see you go McT and best wishes for the future

  14. DNF but not worried as this frees up time to keep working on the Jumbo. Good incidentally to see that on this most genteel of all sites, it is not possible for postings to be arbitrarily taken down, even if that is what the Crossword Editor wanted.

    All the best McT and thank you for the past assistance.

  15. Nice puzzle, which wasn’t as easy as it first seemed. I didn’t help myself by confidently thinking 1ac must be THIEVERY or THIEVING until I realised I was thinking of tea-leaf not tea-bag, and the real answer was something different, and much cleverer. I also had it at the back of my mind that the KINKAJOU was Antipodean, but I suspect I was thinking of the kakapo, which is a very different creature altogether.

    Sorry to hear you’re retiring, McT. So long and thanks for all the fish.

    1. I too thought that Kinkajou was Australian – not helped by recollecting Charlie Drake’s lyric:

      “I can ride a kangaroo (yeh, yeh)
      Make kinkajou stew (yeh, yeh)
      I’m a big disgrace to the Aborigine race
      My boomerang won’t come back!”

      1. Hmmm…now I start to wonder if I can blame Ed “Stewpot” Stewart and Junior Choice for me placing the kinkajou in the wrong continent.
  16. 17 mins but it felt harder than yesterday’s puzzle, and I had to play close attention to the wordplay to find out what was really going on in some of the clues. KINKAJOU was my LOI after POKY and RIND.

    All the best McT, even if you are a rednose.

  17. Didn’t visit the blog yesterday as I had, quite by chance, noticed that the online puzzle was different from the one in the paper and didn’t want to see today’s answers before I’d solved the puzzle.

    Took me 45 minutes, more than double yesterday’s time. My only nit-pick concerns the clue to 27: there was a time when God (with a capital G) would not have been used to indicate “Ares”; not blasphemy, more a question of the done thing. The clues otherwise were very neat; particularly liked 1 across and 12.

    Thanks and best wishes to McT; every time I saw the guitar, I said to myself: “Must get down my old Guild Starfire II from the attic and play a bit of rock ‘n’ roll”. Perhaps I shall today.

  18. Managed to avoid the “extra” blog yesterday, and did “today’s”, i.e. the one in the paper, today. A pleasant, almost intuitive solve, only spoilt by the rather contrived wordplay of BILL OF FARE. A leisurely 35 minutes over elevenses.

    FOI GAMBOL, LOI SHORT CIRCUIT. Nothing really stands out for a COD.

  19. 15:35 for me but by carelessly writing in UNSCIPPTED at 13d I made intermission, my LOI, rather difficult to get until I spotted the error.

    Thetis unknown but gettable. Kinkajou I did know.

    I’m not convinced that the tea bag clue really works and I don’t really get the def for off the record.

    McT, so long, and thanks for all the fish blogs

  20. Incredible stupidity led me to enter SHORT CIRCLES, making INTERMISSION impossible, so a brainless DNF for me. Sorry to have fouled the nest on the occasion of McT’s final offering. Best wishes Alec, and hopefully some future changes will return you to the fold. Regards to all.
  21. Just a note to MCText to thank you for your excellent and most helpful blogs. A very good puzzle made more difficult by having REJIG for21d. I seem to remember one step in and one step out was some sort of jig. COD 12a.
    Best wishes from Chinon

    Mike and Fay

  22. I managed to skip hastily past this blog entry yesterday so was able to able to tackle the puzzle today without any foreknowledge.

    Luckily I seemed to be on the setter’s wavelength (more or less), as I was still feeling very tired, so my time (10:35) wasn’t a disaster.

    With the words “minute? No” in 12ac and the checked letters of the third word in place, I was almost certain it was going to be SECOND (rather than RECORD).

    LOI was PURCHASE. The clue (in exactly that form) looked as if it might be an old chestnut, but the nearest I can find in recent years is “Buy tea in bag (8)” in No. 23,093 (28 Sept. 2005).

    Another straightforward, enjoyable solve.

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